27.10.16 – Soft “hardware” components are becoming more and more popular solutions within the field of robotics. In fact, softness, compliance and foldability bring significant advantages to devices, by allowing conformability and safe interactions with users, objects and unstructured environments. However, for some applications the softness of components adversely reduces the range of forces that …
Continue reading “A Composite Thread that Varies in Rigidity”
07.10.16 – This week, the world’s first Cybathlon will take place in Zurich, Switzerland and today we present to you the second of the NCCR Robotics teams to be taking part in the competition, LeMano. The Cybathlon is the brainchild of NCCR Robotics co-director and ETH Zurich professor Robert Riener, and is designed to facilitate discussion between academics, industry …
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29 Jun – 3 Jul 2020 All Day |
ARCHE 2020
Wangen an der Aare, Wangen an der Aare |
ARCHE (Advanced Robotic Capabilities for Hazardous Environment) was initiated in 2017 by the SCDR of the DDPS and is lead together with the Teaching Unit of Engineering/Rescue/NBC, ETH Zurich, and... |
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13 Sep – 15 Sep 2019 All Day |
EPFL Drone Days 2019 | In 2019, the Drone Days event will happen during EPFL's Open Days (13-15 September) and are part of the institution's 50th anniversary activities. As in the previous years, NCCR Robotics... |
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13 Sep 2019 All Day |
Aviation Digital Transformation Forum
EPFL Rolex Learning Centre, Lausanne |
The event will take place at the EPFL Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland on Friday 13 September at the EPFL Rolex Learning Centre. Dario Floreano, Davide Scaramuzza and Roland... |
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3 May 2019 11:45 am – 2:00 pm |
2nd NCCR Robotics Women in Research Lunch
ETH Zurich, HG G3, Zurich |
Date: Friday, 3 May 2019 Time: 11:45 – 14:00 Location: ETH Zürich, room ML E 13 Guest: Prof. Dr. Heike Valléry, TU Delft Registration: https://ethz.doodle.com/poll/qxet6yvyw7qpui94 by 20 April at the... |
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1 Apr – 5 Apr 2019 All Day |
Hannover Messe 2019
Deutsche Messe, Hannover |
NCCR Robotics will be present at the Hannover Messe 2019 with a corporate booth and 3 additional booths for its spin-offs: Dronistics FES-ABILITY Sevensense The corporate booth will also showcase... |
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3 Dec – 4 Dec 2018 All Day |
BMI Symposium 2018 "Controlling behavior" | Prof. Pavan Ramdya, Prof. Carl Petersen & Prof. Auke Ijspeert (NCCR Robotics PI) invite you to the 2018 BMI Symposium on "Controlling behavior". With this one and a half day symposium, we... |
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1 Nov 2018 All Day |
Swiss Robotics Industry Day 2018
SwissTech Convention Center, Ecublens |
The next Swiss Robotics Industry Day will take place on November 1st, 2018 at the Swiss Tech Convention Centre, in Lausanne. All information on the event can be found here: http://swissroboticsindustry.ch |
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29 Oct – 31 Oct 2018 9:00 am – 5:00 pm |
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2018) | CoRL 2018 will take place on October 29-31 2018 in Zurich. The conference focuses on the intersection of robotics and machine learning. CoRL aims at being a selective, top-tier venue... |
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18 Oct – 19 Oct 2018 All Day |
SNSF Site Visit 2018 | The 2018 SNSF Site Visit will take place in Bern, on October 18 and 19th. More information will be provided closer to the dates. |
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8 Oct – 9 Oct 2018 All Day |
Aerial Futures: The Drone Frontier @ HUBweek
Boston District Hall, Boston |
Swissnex Boston is gathering a selection of some of the most exciting drone exhibitors from Switzerland and the United States to bring to HUBweek. Expect an eclectic selection of UAVs... |
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31 Jul – 2 Aug 2018 All Day |
EPFL Drone Days | Some NCCR Robotics laboratories will present demos at the EPFL Drone Days 2018. https://dronedays.epfl.ch |
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2 Jul – 7 Jul 2018 All Day |
ARCHE
Wangen an der Aare, Wangen an der Aare |
The event took place in the training village of the civil protection forces of the Swiss Federal Department for Defense, Civil Protection and Sport and was used as field test... |
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26 Jun 2018 All Day |
Seminar: Bioinspired Robotics | EPFL Bioinspired Platform invites you to their next Research & Industry Seminar on the topic of Bioinspired Robotics. Join them to learn how researchers and companies and are getting... |
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1 Jun 2018 3:15 pm – 4:45 pm |
Distinguished Seminar in Robotics, Systems & Control | The Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems presents: Telerobotic Touch June 1st 2018, 15h15-16h15 Place: ETHZ, Main Building (HG G3) For those at EPFL: a video streaming will take place... |
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21 May – 25 May 2018 All Day |
ICRA 2018, Brisbane, Australia
Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Center, South Brisbane |
Roland Siegward, NCCR Robotics PI, will be a member of the Industry Forum Chairs Committee at ICRA 2018, in Brisbane, Australia. Margarita Chli, NCCR Robotics PI, will give a keynote... |
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23 Apr – 27 Apr 2018 All Day |
Hannover Messe
Deutsche Messe, Hannover |
NCCR Robotics has a booth within the Swiss Innovation Pavillion and will be accompanied by 2 two of our spin-offs: MyoSwiss and Foldaway Haptics and the project "MIRobotics". For more information... |
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19 Apr 2018 All Day |
Forward (Forum de l'Innovation pour les PME)
SwissTech Convention Center, Ecublens |
NCCR Robotics will have a booth during this event, hosting two of our spin-offs Foldaway Haptics, and TWIICE. https://forward-sme.epfl.ch |
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13 Mar – 15 Mar 2018 All Day |
European Robotics Forum
Tampere Hall, Tampere |
The European Robotics Forum (ERF) 2018 hosted over 900 participants this year in Tampere, Finland from 13 to 15th March. NCCR Robotics was present with a booth, hosting two of... |
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8 Mar – 9 Mar 2018 All Day |
NCCR Robotics Annual Retreat
Hotel Ambassador, Bern |
The 2018 NCCR Robotics Annual Retreat (Bern, 8-9th March) was very successful, not only in bringing the community together but in achieving its targets in preparation for the next phase... |
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12 Sep – 15 Sep 2017 All Day |
11th Conference on Field and Service Robotics
ETH Zurich, Zurich |
For more details and to register please see: https://www.fsr.ethz.ch/ |
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18 Aug 2017 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm |
Seminar: Nanocomposite based Sensing and Monitoring
MED 115 18, EPFL, Lausanne |
Abstract: With the advent of information and communication technologies (ICT), the cost effective, robust and accurate sensors are becoming important elements of internet of things (IoT). Polymeric composite sensors that... |
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5 Jun – 10 Jun 2017 All Day |
Summer School on Rehabilitation Robotics
Biomedical Engineering School, Shanghai |
Organised by the Riener Lab, ETH Zurich. For more information please see: http://www.sms.hest.ethz.ch/news-and-events/sms-news-channel/2017/01/summer-school-on-rehabilitation-robotics.html |
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2 Jun 2017 8:30 am – 5:00 pm |
ICRA Workshop on Event-based vision
sands expo and convention centre, Singapore 018971 |
Tobi Delbruck and Davide Scaramuzza are confirmed speakers. For more information please see: http://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/ICRA17_event_vision_workshop.html |
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24 Apr – 28 Apr 2017 All Day |
Hannover Messe
Hannover Messe, Hannover |
We will present a booth at the Hannover Messe along with Swiss Robotics partners. To organise a meeting with us please contact techtransfer@nccr-robotics.ch |
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27 Mar – 31 Mar 2017 All Day |
Design, Automation and Test in Europe 2017
SwissTech Convention Center, Ecublens |
We will be at the DATE 2017 conference presenting a booth with Swiss Robotics partners. If you would like to arrange a time to meet please contact techtransfer@nccr-robotics.ch |
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20 Mar 2017 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm |
Talk: Roboter als Reha-Helfer im Einsatz by Robert Riener
Universität Zurich Zentrum, Hörsaal KOL-F-101, Zurich |
For more information please see the official flyer. |
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18 Mar – 19 Mar 2017 All Day |
CoWriter project presented at GES, Dubai
Atlantis The Palm, Dubai |
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16 Mar 2017 10:00 am – 11:00 am |
Talk by Prof. Eric Tytell (Tufts University), Quantifying responses to perturbations during locomotion in fish
MED 115 18, EPFL, Lausanne |
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6 Mar – 9 Mar 2017 All Day |
R4L @HRI2017
Aula der Wissenschaft – Hall of Science, Vienna |
http://r4l.epfl.ch/HRI2017 |
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2 Mar 2017 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm |
Business Ideas @EPFL Swiss Robotics going global
SwissTech Convention Center, Ecublens |
www.ifj.ch/cti-epfl |
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2 Mar 2017 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm |
Business Ideas @EPFL
SwissTech Convention Center, Ecublens |
http://www.ifj.ch/cti-epfl |
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13 Feb 2017 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm |
Talk by Dr Diego Pardo (ETHZ) Legged Robots: Stepping out of the continuous and differentiable zone.
EPFL, Lausanne |
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16 Dec 2016 3:15 pm – 4:15 pm |
Talk: MIT Cheetah: new design paradigm shift toward mobile robots, ETH Distinguished Lecture in Robotics, Systems & Control - Sangbae Kim
ETH Zurich, HG G3, Zurich |
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19 Nov 2016 3:15 pm – 4:15 pm |
Talk: Insect-inspired technologies for civilian drones by Dario Floreano
ETH Zurich, HG G3, Zurich |
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9 Nov 2016 10:00 am – 11:00 am |
Talk: Rehabilitation robotics - Cristina Santos, Universidade do Minho, Portugal; Dealing with uncertainty in robot grasping - Alexandre Bernardino, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal; Locomotion with the Walkman humanoid robot - Nikos Tsagarakis, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy.
MED 115 18, EPFL, Lausanne |
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4 Nov 2016 3:15 pm – 4:15 pm |
Talk: Designing and Controlling Robots for Direct Interaction with Humans by Prof. Alin Albu-Schaeffer, German Aerospace Center, Germany.
ETH Zurich, HG G3, Zurich |
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2 Nov 2016 All Day |
Swiss Robotics Industry Day
SwissTech Convention Center, Ecublens |
Please see www.swissindustryday.ch |
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23 Oct – 27 Oct 2016 All Day |
International Symposium on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR 16) | Please see http://ssrrobotics.org/index.html |
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9 Oct – 12 Oct 2016 All Day |
WORKSHOP ON BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACES (SMC 2016)
Intercontinental Hotel, BUDAPEST, 1052 Budapest |
Please see: https://documents.epfl.ch/users/c/ch/chavarri/www/IEEESMC2016_BMI/BMI-IEEESMC2016.html |
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23 Sep 2016 3:15 pm – 4:15 pm |
Talk: Humanitarian Robotics and Automation Technologies by Dr. Raj Madhavan
ETH Zurich, HG G3, Zurich |
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13 Jul – 15 Jul 2016 All Day |
Workshop on Dynamic Locomotion and Manipulation (DLMC2016)
ETH Zurich, Zurich |
Please see the website http://www.dlmc2016.ethz.ch/ |
Looking for publications? You might want to consider searching on the EPFL Infoscience site which provides advanced publication search capabilities.
We are witnessing the advent of a new era of robots — drones — that can autonomously fly in natural and man-made environments. These robots, often associated with defence applications, could have a major impact on civilian tasks, including transportation, communication, agriculture, disaster mitigation and environment preservation. Autonomous flight in confined spaces presents great scientific and technical challenges owing to the energetic cost of staying airborne and to the perceptual intelligence required to negotiate complex environments. We identify scientific and technological advances that are expected to translate, within appropriate regulatory frameworks, into pervasive use of autonomous drones for civilian applications.
Soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) are found in mobile robots, assistive wearable devices, and rehabilitative technologies. While soft actuators have been one of the most crucial elements of technology leading the development of the soft robotics field, they fall short of force output and bandwidth requirements for many tasks. Additionally, other general problems remain open including robustness, controllability, and repeatability. The SPA-pack architecture presented here aims to satisfy these standards of reliability crucial to the field of soft robotics, while also improving the basic performance capabilities of SPAs by borrowing advantages leveraged ubiquitously in biology; namely the structured parallel arrangement of lower power actuators to form the basis of a larger, more powerful actuator module. An SPA-pack module consisting of a number of smaller SPAs will be studied using an analytical model and physical prototype. Experimental measurements show an SPA-pack to generate over 112 N linear force, while the model indicates the benefit of parallel actuator grouping over a geometrically equivalent single SPA scales as an increasing function of the number of individual actuators in the group. For a module of four actuators, a 23 % increase in force production over a volumetrically equivalent single SPA is predicted and validated, while further gains appear possible up to 50 %. These findings affirm the advantage of utilizing a fascicle structure for high-performance soft robotic applications over existing monolithic SPA designs. An example high-performance soft robotic platform will be presented to demonstrate the capability of SPA-pack modules in a complete and functional system.
We present a fully edible pneumatic actuator based on gelatin-glycerol material. The actuator is monolithic, fabricated via a molding process, and measures 90 mm in length, 20 mm in width, and 17 mm in thickness. Thanks to the material mechanical characteristics similar to those of silicone elastomers, the actuator exhibits a bending angle of 170.3 degrees and a blocked force of 0.34 N at the applied pressure of 25 kPa. These values are comparable to elastomer based pneumatic actuators. As a validation example, two actuators are integrated to form a gripper capable of handling various objects, highlighting the high performance and applicability of the edible actuator. These edible actuators, combined with other recent edible materials and electronics, could lay the foundation for a new type of edible robots.
There has been an increasing interest in the use of unconventional materials and morphologies in robotic systems because the underlying mechanical properties (such as body shapes, elasticity, viscosity, softness, density and stickiness) are crucial research topics for our in-depth understanding of embodied intelligence. The detailed investigations of physical system-environment interactions are particularly important for systematic development of technologies and theories of emergent adaptive behaviors. Based on the presentations and discussion in the Future Emerging Technology (fet11) conference, this article introduces the recent technological development in the field of soft robotics, and speculates about the implications and challenges in the robotics and embodied intelligence research. (C) Selection and peer-review under responsibility of FET11 conference organizers and published by Elsevier B.V.
Soft actuators made from elastomeric active materials can find widespread potential implementation in a variety of applications ranging from assistive wearable technologies targeted at biomedical rehabilitation or assistance with activities of daily living, bioinspired and biomimetic systems, to gripping and manipulating fragile objects, and adaptable locomotion. In this manuscript, we propose a novel two-component soft actuator design and design tool that produces actuators targeted towards these applications with enhanced mechanical performance and manufacturability. Our numerical models developed using the finite element method can predict the actuator behavior at large mechanical strains to allow efficient design iterations for system optimization. Based on two distinctive actuator prototypes’ (linear and bending actuators) experimental results that include free displacement and blocked-forces, we have validated the efficacy of the numerical models. The presented extensive investigation of mechanical performance for soft actuators with varying geometric parameters demonstrates the practical application of the design tool, and the robustness of the actuator hardware design, towards diverse soft robotic systems for a wide set of assistive wearable technologies, including replicating the motion of several parts of the human body.
This paper presents an affordable, fully automated and accurate mapping solutions based on ultra-light UAV imagery. Several datasets are analysed and their accuracy is estimated. We show that the accuracy highly depends on the ground resolution (flying height) of the input imagery. When chosen appropriately this mapping solution can compete with traditional mapping solutions that capture fewer high-resolution images from airplanes and that rely on highly accurate orientation and positioning sensors on board. Due to the careful integration with recent computer vision techniques, the post processing is robust and fully automatic and can deal with inaccurate position and orientation information which are typically problematic with traditional techniques.
Research made over the past decade shows the use of increasingly complex methods and heavy platforms to achieve autonomous flight in cluttered environments. However, efficient behaviors can be found in nature where limited sensing is used, such as in insects progressing toward a light at night. Interestingly, their success is based on their ability to recover from the numerous collisions happening along their imperfect flight path. The goal of the AirBurr project is to take inspiration from these insects and develop a new class of flying robots that can recover from collisions and even exploit them. Such robots are designed to be robust to crashes and can take-off again without human intervention. They navigate in a reactive way and, unlike conventional approaches, they don’t need heavy modelling in order to fly autonomously. We believe that this new paradigm will bring flying robots out of the laboratory environment and allow them to tackle unstructured, cluttered environments. This paper aims at presenting the vision of the AirBurr project, as well as the latest results in the design of a platform capable of sustaining collisions and self-recovering after crashes.
Domestic service robots are currently powered by the mains electricity. The growing multiplication of such devices negatively impacts our environment. In this study, we show the feasibility of harvesting energy from natural light in an indoor environment. The design of the harvester is carefully carried out using an experimental characterisation of several solar panels, while the boost converter is optimised to operate at low-light intensities and the robot is enhanced for low-power operations. The resulting harvester is then thoroughly characterised. Finally, a phototaxis experiment is conducted, proving the feasibility of recharging the robot solely by using this form of energy. The possibility of embedding energy harvesting in indoor mobile robots radically changes the potential impact of this technology in our society.
Robotic technologies, whether they are remotely operated vehicles, autonomous agents, assistive devices, or novel control interfaces, offer many promising capabilities for deployment in real‐world environments. Post disaster scenarios area particularly relevant target for applying such technologies, due to the challenging conditions faced by rescue workers and the possibility to increase their efficacy while decreasing the …
Continue reading “The current state and future outlook of rescue robotics”
